When a professional approaches an English teacher, because he/she needs to develop language skills for purposes of understanding technical material of his/her specialty, the English teacher is confronted with the dilemma of just how or what exactly to teach to this professional. Teaching to translate or understand technical materials to a professional has its ups and downs. We are talking here more of a private consultation instead of a curriculum which should be followed. Curriculums tend to be rigid and authoritarian. But private classes enjoy the liberty of flexibility, and a subjective approach. So, we are concerned here with what to teach to private students who come for advise or training in English comprehension.

These students who come for help, bring along with them a great desire just to march right into a very complicated text, article or manual which comes in English trying to ignore all the difficulties which definitely are there waiting for them. Their tendency is just to get the information encoded in the text and leave the rest (English) aside. My conclusion, after 30 years of teaching, is that we should help them in this effort, instead of trying to hold them back, and stuff as much English language and grammar into their system as we possibly can. But we should do this without becoming careless or superficial.

There are MAINLY three types of persons who need to read and comprehend material written in English. These are.

1.- A student in a technical school or a university who needs further practice.

2.- A professional already graduated and possibly holding a job.

3.- A teacher of any subject who needs to read and understand technical material.

The three cases are similar, but with some definite degree of difference between them.

One problem common to all three is the unwillingness to learn new vocabulary. Without the knowledge of new terminology, comprehension is always limited, no matter how much grammar does the individual know. Interestingly enough, the professional teacher knows quite a bit about terminology, but only of his/her profession, and he/she is quite careless or unwilling about learning new technical vocabulary. This problem, unfortunately, cannot be remedied. Personal effort must be applied .

The other common problem is recognition and comprehension of idiomatic expressions. Scientific articles and manuals are filled with expressions which cannot be literally translated. These two items are a major obstacle for any Spanish speaking individual who wishes to read comprehensibly specialized texts in English.

Let's elaborate a bit on each of these types of students.